A few weeks ago, they gave me a new cellphone. I assume it has more computing power than the mainframe that launched the Apollo missions, but I use only two things.

First, it’s got a flashlight. There is a frightened caveman hiding deep in all our lizard brains, and nothing soothes his existential terror like a constant source of luminescence.

It also has a daily calendar, which I can’t figure out how to work. I put things in there and they disappear immediately. If I was supposed to help you move last week, that’s my excuse.

This, then, is a small effort to remind myself where I need to be next year. I’ll cut it out of the paper and carry it around in my wallet and look at it from time to time. Using my flashlight. Synaptic win/win.

Jan. 1: The Leafs and Red Wings play in the Winter Classic. It’s nowhere close to a classic and the Leafs win, so it’s more of a Winter Miracle. You are more chilled by the alumni game, when it occurs to you that Darryl Sittler wasn’t just a pretty good player who once played for Toronto. He’s the greatest Leaf in modern history. The Red Wings have got a hall of fame buffet out there, and we’re treating Dan Daoust like he’s Rocket Richard.

Jan. 6: Auburn beats Florida State in the Rose Bowl. Spend most of the evening trying to figure out who’s who, where Auburn is, and what roses have to do with anything. You know deep in your heart that unless it’s Notre Dame, it doesn’t really matter.

Jan. 11: The Raptors lose their seventh in a row to Brooklyn. The tank sounded like a better idea before it actually started working.

Jan. 13: The Australian Open starts. Gripped by Milos Raonic-related fever, you start getting up to watch tennis and guzzle beer at 3 in the morning. A week in, you have an actual fever.

Feb. 2: Seattle versus Denver in Super Bowl XLVIII. This game will be played outdoors in New York (i.e. New Jersey). It will snow steadily throughout and be generally miserable, convincing Jon Bon Jovi that he should move the Bills to Punta Cana instead of Toronto.

Feb. 4: Leafs lose to the Panthers. Everyone in Toronto decides to take a nice long nap and only get out of bed once the Olympics start.

Feb. 6: Opening ceremonies of the Sochi Winter Games. All the world sighs indulgently as Vladimir Putin leaps from the stands, tears off his shirt and fights a grizzly bear that’s wandered in “by accident.” Several members of the Zimbabwean team get frostbite after waiting eight hours to march into the stadium. At future Winter Olympics, Zimbabwe to be known as AAA-Zimbabwe.

Feb. 14: The Blue Jays ask all their catchers if they’d like to be pitchers instead.

Feb. 15: After a whirlwind countrywide romance, we break up with our (yet-to-be-determined) Olympic sweetheart. She’s already started getting huffy when we say we’re going to watch hockey instead tonight.

Feb. 20: Canada informs Russia that it has too many gold medals to carry home, and that they should keep some of them. No, no, not the skating ones. We like those. Take the Nordic combined golds. We don’t even know what that sport is.

Feb. 23: Valorous, gritty, patriotic lovers of freedom vs. the horde from the Steppe in the gold-medal hockey game. All of Canada celebrates a glorious win over Russia, while all the Canadians stupid enough to still be in Sochi celebrate by being force-marched to the Black Sea and told to swim home.

Feb. 24: Now that the Olympics are over, everyone promises themselves they’re gonna start going to the gym. Everyone joins a gym. No one ever goes.

March 22: Toronto FC’s home opener. New Brazilian arrival Gilberto scores three, then dies of exposure.

April 3: NHL trade deadline day. You think to yourself, “This is the year. This is the year NHL trade deadline day is interesting.” You’re wrong. Again.

April 4: Toronto Blue Jays home opener against the Yankees. Or as it is consistently known in retrospect, the high point.

April 5: Entire day wasted watching YouTube videos of drunken oafs fist-fighting in the 500s during Jays home opener.

April 12: The Leafs lose their final game of the regular season to Ottawa. Draw Boston in the playoffs. Hockey analytics prove that shots per game really do matter, and that there is no God.

April 13: You can deal with the fact that Tiger Woods has just won his fifth Masters. What you’re having trouble with is Lindsey Vonn swanning around the place like she had anything to do with it. Olympically speaking, this is where we have a strong advantage over America — in the quality of our sweethearts.

April 16: The Raptors lose their final game of the season to Brooklyn. They finish 12th in the East. IN THE EAST!! All of a sudden, being steamrolled by Indiana in the first round of the playoffs sounds like it might have been fun.

April 28: Leafs beat Boston in Game 7. While fans riot, MLSE begins bulldozing a parade route between Queen St. and Queens Quay. Mayor Rob Ford will later call this a billion-dollar cost savings on subway construction.

April 25: The human beards on the Boston Red Sox arrive in Toronto for their first series of the season. Fearing karmic retribution, Toronto decides to be classy and applaud John Farrell. Later, after Farrell doffs his cap in what everyone agrees is a smarmy way, Jays brass will deeply regret making this the day they gave away souvenir darts.

May 9: Leafs lose in four to Pittsburgh. Fans riot in controlled fashion along the parade route, eventually ending up in the lake. That was the plan all along.

May 20: NBA draft lottery. The one day in history Toronto might like to be Clevelandesque. They aren’t.

May 23: You set the holiday weekend aside to think quietly about the Leafs’ salary-cap issues. They’re a little like your brother-in-law’s second marriage — you know it’s not going to work out, but talking about it depresses everyone. An entire day’s worth of work runs up against the shoals of long division. You decide that your brother-in-law has got life figured out — just pretend everything’s fine.

May 24: Real Madrid beats Bayern Munich in the Champions League final. All your hooting about Barcelona has been noted, and now you become the object of derision amongst the friends who have always loved Real. Good news — that’s no one.

May 25: Oakville’s James Hinchcliffe wins the Indy 500. Or finishes second. Or fifth. Or whatever. Be honest. Since the Leafs lost, you have trouble in small spaces where there are televisions. You didn’t watch this. You know that once the TV goes on then — whammo — you’re about to get hurt. You’ll read about it the next day and pretend you know something about IndyCar other than the fact that James Hinchcliffe owns one.

May 28: You promised yourself that you weren’t going to worry about the Jays until June at the earliest. But you’re already worried. Don’t feel weird. This is the third step of getting past Toronto-sports-related PTSD.

June 3: Someone working in a position of authority at a Toronto-based sports franchise is fired.

June 4: Everyone thinks that guy — whoever he is — had to be fired.

June 5: Now, after a day spent being infected by sports radio, everyone thinks firing that guy was idiotically short-sighted.

June 6: First calls for them to fire the new guy. Who hasn’t been hired yet.

June 12: Brazil vs. Croatia in the first game of World Cup 2014. What we thought was a pre-game fireworks display is, in fact, a controlled demolition of shoddily constructed portions of the Arena de Sao Paolo.

June 13: If you live within audible honking distance of College St., you already want to kill yourself.

June 14: Luis Suarez bites someone.

June 20: Oklahoma City beats Indiana in the NBA championship. You know how you sometimes think to yourself, “How low can it get?” It’s gotten so low, you wish you lived in Oklahoma.

June 24: St. Louis wins the Stanley Cup. You’re just glad it wasn’t a Canadian team. OK, Edmonton you could maybe stand. Even Calgary. Ottawa in a stretch. But if Vancouver or Montreal ever win again, you’re going to really lock yourself down on that “nothing but curling” promise.

June 26: NBA draft. The Raptors are picking eighth. It hurts when Andrew Wiggins goes first to Milwaukee. It hurts a whole lot. A half-hour in, after you’ve seen a half-dozen franchise changers dispatched to wastelands like Orlando and Sacramento, you’re weeping in front of the television. Toronto just misses out on Kentucky’s Julius Randle — the LaMarcus Aldridge of your future nightmares. They get . . . well, you’ve never even heard of the guy they get. This pain may never end.

June 28: The CFL season starts. You know that however bad it gets, you will always have the Argos and their stalwart competence to lean on. That’s what the Argos are — your local sports rock.

July 4: England loses to someone on penalties.

July 6: Luis Suarez bites someone else.

July 10: The one-year countdown begins to the 2015 Pan Am Games. Great news! This means the rail link between Union Station and Pearson Airport will be ready in three years.

July 13: Argentina wins the World Cup. Brazil’s parliament passes a retroactive bill cancelling the World Cup.

July 14: You tune back in to baseball. Dear God.

Sept. 11: The Leafs open training camp. You can’t help but notice that these Leafs look a whole lot like last year’s Leafs. You spend another long afternoon thinking about centres and hating teams that have them. Don’t blame Tyler Bozak while you do this. It’s not his fault.

Sept. 14: The U.S. wins the FIBA Basketball World Cup in Spain. Canada could not stuff enough cash into a brown bag to get a wild-card draw into the tournament. Whatever. You’re thinking 2019 is our year. Tyler Ennis, Tristan Thompson, Kelly Olynyk, Andrew Wiggins . . . and then thinking about Wiggins sends you back down an emotional sinkhole.

Sept. 1-30: The baseball is not meaningful. But everyone lets that slide because . . .

Oct. 1: The Leafs begin the 2013-14 campaign. This is the one. This is the one. This is the . . . you wake up, dazed, and find that you’ve been writing, “This is the one” all over your bedroom walls in crayon. Begin to suspect that those bright, intermittent flashes on Leafs TV aren’t just signal problems.

Oct. 20: The Dodgers beat the Tigers in Game 7 of the World Series. It occurs to you that Joe Carter’s home run was 21 years ago. Now you feel like baseball Methuselah.

Oct. 31: Toronto FC competes in its first playoff game after eight years in existence. It rains frogs.

Nov. 1: The Raptors’ 20th anniversary season begins. If someone else tells you again how much Jonas Valanciunas and DeMar DeRozan have matured as players, you will start swinging. Honestly. You don’t care who wanders into your kill-zone anymore.

Nov. 8: Floyd Mayweather dismantles some poor slob in a Vegas title fight. You spend the evening knowledgeably articulating the keys to Mayweather’s defence-first style. Too bad no one would come over and watch the fight with you, because they were afraid you’d ask them to split the $150 pay-per-view scalping.

Nov. 14: It’s now been two years since the Jays made that big trade with the Miami Marlins. You remember back to how happy you were then, and it breaks your heart.

Nov. 24: The Leafs win both games of a home-and-away against the Bruins. You finally decide that Jonathan Bernier is more Johnny Bower than Turk Broda. James Reimer can be Turk. This is the one.

Nov. 30: The Argos win the Grey Cup. Hey, what the hell. It’s my fantasy calendar. It can’t all be a kick in the nads.

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